Jill has worked in the field of therapeutic recreation since 1987. She began her career with Project STRIDE a grant project designed to provide summer leisure education programs for teens with developmental disabilities. She spent her winters as a ski patrol. Her year round career began two years later, working as an inpatient therapist in physical rehabilitation where she became senior staff therapist and director of aquatics. In 1990 she founded Northeast Passage (NEP) as a private not for profit, and in 2000 merged NEP with the University of New Hampshire to become the service and research branch within the Department of Recreation Management and Policy. Over the last twenty years Jill has served as the director of Northeast Passage, a nationally and internationally recognized program that delivers community and school based recreational therapy and adapted sports. Jill has served as Project Coordinator on four federal grants focused on developing state-of-the-art RT programs in community settings. She has conducted research on the efficacy of the PATH program model, a community based RT intervention designed to reduce secondary conditions and promote healthy behaviors in individuals with disabilities. Of highest priority at this time is the development of new venues for fully reimbursed, goal-based, recreational therapy with in community settings. In 2006, Jill chaired the task force that successfully achieved licensure for therapeutic recreation in the State of New Hampshire.
